Thursday, March 27, 2014

The music teachers Facebook Frenzy starts in less than 12 hours. If you have already participated in a Facebook Frenzy you know what to do, but I decided to put together some directions for those of you that don't know what to do.

You need to make sure you are a computer, where you will see these tabs towards the top the page:

2) Click the tab that says Music Frenzy. If you have NOT already 'liked' the facebook page you are on this image will appear when you click the tab:

3) Once you have 'liked' my page or the facebook page you are on you will see an image that looks like this:

4) Click the image that shows a cover page to download the freebie
5) Click the sun to go to the next page

As you continue through the pages just keep looking for the Music Frenzy tabs and clicking the downloads until you get back to my page. That way you know you collected all the fun goodies. Then you get to go through the fun process of figuring out what you got and how to use it all!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

My kinders are starting to learn about long and short sounds. This is the last thing I need to teach for analysis this year. We have already learned about high vs. low, fast vs. slow, and loud vs. soft.

To learn about long and short I like to use the patterns tiptoe, walk, and jump. Tip-toe represents the two shortest sounds as it gets two sounds in the beat. Walk represents the one beat sound, and jump represents the longest sound (two beats). Jump, jumps from one beat to another. In order to practice this I normally have students jumping, tiptoeing and walking by their chairs for several days. Then I give them symbols to represent the three actions: two small dots for tip-toe, one short line for walk, and an upside down U for jump. I have students create their own patterns on the board with these symbols and we perform the actions together as a class.

This year I created a mini-composition for all the kids to work on, so EVERYONE gets a chance to create their own long and short patterns. There are only a few rules to their compositions. They have to create two lines of four beat patterns. (This means that the two dots of tip-toe must go together in a beat. You cannot separate them!) Jump has to take up two beats and you can only put a jump to beats 1 and 2, 2 and 3, or 3 and 4. (Otherwise you jump off the edge!) It is much easier to explain all of this visually to my kinders and they had no problem understanding what they needed to do.

Today, all my kinders created their own compositions and performed them for their classmates. Here are some pictures of finished compositions!

If you would like to use this composition in your own classroom, this is a forever freebie in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and you can find it HERE. Please leave a rating and feedback if you use it, but please remember that it is free and nothing fancy by any means. Just something cute and simple! (Click the follow me link, if you haven't already, to be updated on all my future products and told about my special followers only deals.)